Monday, January 08, 2007

Our Iceberg Is Melting

This seems to be the era of the penguin. Opus is back in the Sunday comics, March of the PenguinsandHappyFeet are huge hits in the theater, and now...Our Iceberg Is Melting: Changing and Succeeding Under Any Conditions. No, this has nothing to do with global warming. Instead, John Kotter and Holger Rathgeber have written an enchanting little fable about a penguin who discovers that the iceberg on which he and his flock live is about to collapse. How will he convince the leaders of the flock about his findings? If he can convince the leaders, how will they build consensus to determine a plan of action? And can they implement change in the face of apathy and antipathy in the unknown amount of time they have left?

If this sounds like the challenges you face in your regular day-to-day work (OK, not the iceberg part, but the change part), then you will love this book. It's funny, it has terrific illustrations by Peter Mueller, and it manages to be inspiring without being preachy.

This is a book you can (and probably should) read in one sitting. And then read it again a few days later and see how well Kotter and Rathgeber have constructed their tale. And finally, check out their web site to get ideas about how to implement the penguins' ideas into your daily work.

Kudos to my colleagues at the OCLC Library and Information Center for pointing me toward this book.

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PLEASE NOTE: This blog ceased being updated on August 30, 2010.
A blog from five OCLC staff about all things present and future that impact libraries and library users. A conversation that starts with the Environmental Scan and wanders around from there. This content is not vetted by OCLC. Everything you read is purely the personal reflections about what's going on in libraryland, informed by our birds-eye views from the center of the WorldCat universe (Dublin, Ohio, USA and beyond).